The Good Nazi
by Fredosphere
Summary: John's duty as a Nazi requires him to make a sacrifice he may not have the courage to make.
1. Chapter 1

_This story is a sequel to Season 1 Episode 8 and is not intended to conform to the series thereafter._

The Mercedes sedan bounced and lurched to a halt at the trail's terminus before the solid, broad-shouldered log cabin _Obergruppenführer_ John Smith fondly called his hunting lodge. The place was peaceful, masculine, and very private. Perfect for his purpose.

John got out, stretched, and yawned. John's son Thomas scrambled out of the passenger's side and jogged with youth's boundless energy through the tall, damp grass of the surrounding meadow, circling the cabin to the overlook of the lake. The water would appear a rosy, mist-shrouded mirror of the dawn sky—balm to the suburban soul.

Yes, perfect. John opened the trunk and pushed aside the duffle bags to pull out his shotgun. With Thomas out of sight, he inserted two shells and closed the break with a firm, businesslike click.

John was a good Nazi. He would not hesitate. It was a fortunate thing, too, for Thomas was already returning, rounding the corner of the lodge. He and John made eye contact while John stood there with the shotgun angled down. John noticed just the slightest faltering in Thomas' stride. Was that the boy's illness? Or some suspicion, felt at some deep, intuitive level? Whatever the cause, John did not think his own guilt imagined it.

John was a good Nazi. he had no guilt.

Thomas, a well-disciplined youth, did not need to be told to help unpack. He gave his father a curious look but said nothing. Thomas pulled both duffles from the trunk, their rich black leather matching that of his father's duster. As he turned toward the lodge, his back presented the perfect target.

John ought to raise the shotgun now and blow the back of his son's head off. Out here, with no witnesses and no apparent motive, no one (save Dr. Adler!) would suspect Thomas' death was anything but accidental. So simple: raise the barrel; pull the trigger.

John did nothing.

The father in him was relieved. The soldier in him reasoned the hunt would provide a more plausible alibi. The Nazi in him was coldly contemptuous.


	2. Chapter 2

Obergruppenführer John Smith knew this hunting trip would be dreadful. What he did not expect was for it to be nerve-wracking. Unpacking, suiting up for the hunt, tramping through the brush-all presented opportunities for the fatal "accident". There was a moment in the lodge when, clad in their tweed jackets like a couple of _nouveau_ poor English squires, they had reached for their guns by the door. Thomas, ever more clumsy now due to his illness, knocked over both guns. Assuming John's gun was unloaded as it most certainly ought to be, Thomas picked it up by the barrel and handed it stock-first to John.

How easy it would have been to pull the trigger. John considered the possibility...and decided he didn't want blood on the floor. A visible stain would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Later, walking through the sparse woods, Thomas carelessly got out ahead of John. Hunters were supposed to spread out side by side to stay out of the line of fire. Thomas was practically begging to be shot. A startled pheasant flew up between them and gave John an excellent excuse.

But not excellent enough. John hesitated, worrying about the distance. It was essential he kill Thomas outright in one shot. At this distance, bird shot could kill a pheasant. But a boy, wearing a thick wool coat? John wasn't sure.

It had seemed so simple when John had planned this hunting trip. _Boy Killed in Tragic Hunting Accident_ —it seemed so natural when he thought of it as a headline. The details weren't so easy.

The trip was threatening to drive John mad. Startled pheasants gave him several excellent shots, but his concentration was ruined and his aim was terrible. Somehow, every bird survived unscathed.

Thomas had similarly terrible luck, but the boy was typical of his coddled generation, so that was no surprise. Those not hardened by the kind of combat John had seen were bound to lack the killing edge. And that did not even take into consideration the degeneration of muscular control due to Thomas' disease. The boy was fast becoming helpless and worthless. And yet, John found himself unable to do the necessary thing to his son.

His only son.

Helpless, indeed. It seemed to run in the family.


	3. Chapter 3

The sun sets late in northern Vermont summers, but that evening, it seemed to take impossibly long. John's misery had only increased as he and Thomas had returned from the hunt with nothing—and, John noted, no one. John had cooked supper, an uninspired meal of canned beans and bratwurst, with a wide-open opportunity to slip poison into Thomas' plate. John rejected the idea. Dr. Adler, the poison's provider, had claimed it was undetectable, and the autopsy would blame a heart attack, but how likely was that cause of death in one so young? Someone might suspect foul play, or worse, might suspect a congenital heart defect that would put John's family under the very scrutiny he was trying to avoid.

No, the best way of killing Thomas, it was clear in retrospect, was a gun accident. But John had already lost his appetite for that method.

"Father, I'm tired. I'd like to go to bed."

John regarded his sleepy-eyed son. In the cabin's dim, yellow lamplight, the boy's pimples and dirty face were blurred away and he seemed even more the perfect exemplar of a Nazi heir. With his tousled hair and rugged flannel shirt he might have been posing for a Hitler Youth recruiting poster.

John made an extra effort to reply in a steady voice.

"Yes, you go ahead. Take the top bunk. I'll be up for a while yet; I have work to do."

John's statement was absurd. He had been sitting in the musty, overstuffed chair by the fire since the dishes were done, doing nothing but staring at the far wall of rough-hewn logs. Such was his inattention to detail that he had not brought a satchel of papers. He had not expected to stay the night, and yet, here he was, sitting up in the semi-dark while his son struggled with weakened arms to pull his body up onto the bunk.

At last Thomas got himself into the bunk and laid down, turned to the side so the light of the fire was not flickering in his eyes.

John waited. Scenes of his past, deliberately forgotten scenes of cruelty and every kind of wickedness, came to his attention like a line of POWs shuffling up to him to make their resentful, hollow-eyed accusations. His mentors had told him the way of life he had chosen would require strength, and he had rejoiced. He had been a fool; John saw now the way demanded of him a kind of strength he had not expected: an inhuman strength. To send those memories—of innocent people murdered, of children used as hostages for the enslavement of parents, of repeating the bald-faced lies his superiors found convenient—to send those memories back down to the deep unconscious part of his mind where they could never trouble him again was utterly beyond John's ability.

And yet, here he was. He was sitting in this lodge, waiting until he heard his beloved son Thomas' steady, slow breaths that signaled deep sleep. Waiting for the time after which his excuses would run out.

John leaned over and pulled from his duffel an overnight bag labeled only with a neat swastika embossed in its black leather. Inside was a small case.

It contained a vial of a powerful barbiturate and a syringe. It seemed Dr. Adler's first suggestion had been correct all along. An injection, a quick stab in the sleeper, was the only way. Or, if not the only way, then at least, the way that presented itself, now that John was done with waiting.

That is what John told himself. But after he had filled the syringe from the tiny, deadly bottle, he continued to stare at the wall—and the fire crackled, and Thomas maintained his deep, quiet, steady breaths, and John's ghostly accusers marched past as he did nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

John smelled something terrible, a foreign, chemical smell. Rather than anger him, the odor made him confused. Where was he? Why couldn't he see? What was happening?

A sting in his arm jolted John awake. The lamps were out and the fire had died down to embers. In the dark stood Thomas, still in the underwear he slept in, pulling a syringe out of John's vein with one hand while holding a damp cloth in the other.

John recognized the smell: chloroform!

John struggled to stand. He tried to bark out a question, but his mouth felt cottony and wouldn't move properly. John's knees buckled and as Thomas stepped back to make way, John fell flat onto the rough boards of the lodge floor.

"Good. He promised me the drug would take immediate effect." That was Thomas' voice, sounding distant, and with its usual boyishness gone.

 _Who promised you…?_ was the question John's mouth refused to utter. John's entire body was in rebellion against him. He could do nothing but lay on the floor and gasp.

"Really, Father. I hope you're not blaming me for the fix you're in." Thomas, showing no physical weakness now, lifted his father upright on the floor and leaned his torso against the base of the chair. Already, John was losing all feeling in his extremities.

"This is your own damn fault. I gave you many opportunities—but you refused each one."

John's confusion was giving way to anger, and worse than anger, fear.

"It's not like there was no risk to me. Blank shotgun shells can still injure at close distance. I was gambling you wouldn't shoot me point blank. But here: let me explain the whole thing."

Thomas sat down on the floor right in front of John, cross-legged, the picture of relaxed, confident privilege. The picture of a son of an elite Nazi.

"I've been in communication for some time now with Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich."


	5. Chapter 5

p id="docs-internal-guid-7d505b6e-f475-20a5-5bc7-ef8acb16504b" dir="ltr"emOh no. Oh no oh no oh no./em John intended the words as a scream, but all that came out were raspy breaths./p  
p dir="ltr""Heydrich has made heroic plans to carry the Nazi project to its next stage of development. He believes he is alone among the senior generation of Nazis in having the vision and will to make it happen. And he has honored me by revealing his secrets to me. He says he believes I have a bright future in the Party. He says he sees something of himself in me. I have 'that special something.'"/p  
p dir="ltr"emNo, Thomas! He's lying! I know what Heydrich is like! He gets impressionable young men to do his dirty work and betray the Fürher, and then he lures them to his castle and disposes of them./em/p  
p dir="ltr""He said he was afraid you do not have that same something."/p  
p dir="ltr"emThomas, can't you see? He's using you!/em/p  
p dir="ltr""I told him I was sure you were as fine a Nazi as any man, second only to the Fürher himself. See, Father: I defended you. No matter what you think, I've been loyal to you—loyal to a fault./p  
p dir="ltr"emYou've betrayed me!/em/p  
p dir="ltr""So I proposed a test to Herr Heydrich. He's a fair man; he agreed to help me. He commended me for my plan, in fact—he said it showed remarkable initiative."/p  
p dir="ltr"emFlattery! You can't trust that snake!/em/p  
p dir="ltr""I swapped my medical records with those of Uncle George. Heydrich gave me the name of someone at the hospital who could help me with that. I wanted to see how you would react when Dr. Adler told you of my disease: would you do your duty, or let sentiment get in your way?"/p  
p dir="ltr"emOh Thomas—what have you done?/em/p  
p dir="ltr""I was so glad when you asked me on this hunting trip. See? I wanted you to succeed." THomas frowned and his voice faltered. "I had so wanted you to be the kind of father I could be proud of. I could have gone to Heydrich with proof of your worth. You and I, with Heydrich, all of us together, could have been the ones to lead the Reich into its next phase."/p  
p dir="ltr"emOh Thomas!/em/p  
p dir="ltr""I wasn't stupid, of course. I was watching you. I replaced all your shotgun shells with blanks, and when I found where you had hid Dr. Adler's syringe, I poured out the poison and replaced it with harmless water. I replaced the other poisons you bought as well."/p  
p dir="ltr"emHeydrich has turned you into a traitor!/em/p  
p dir="ltr""Then, I waited for you to act. It was torture, waiting all day for you to turn your gun on me, trying to stay close enough for you to take a shot, but not so close the blast of the blank might burn me./p  
p dir="ltr"And then, last night, laying in bed, expecting the jab of a needle at any moment. And all the while, coming to terms with the growing possibility that you might prove to be too weak to do it. Telling myself not to lose faith in you, believing to the last in my own father."/p  
p dir="ltr"emI was thinking only of what was best for you! And you were setting a trap for me!/em/p  
p dir="ltr"Thomas' face twisted with bitterness. "You never acted. You sat there like a sheep." Thomas stepped back to regard John in full as he lay slumped before his chair. "When I woke up this morning and found you sitting there, asleep—asleep! With the proof of your guilt, the syringe, lying in your lap! How—" Thomas' jaw was fairly chattering with rage, and he struggled to spit out the poisonous words. "How empathetic/em. Can't you do emanything/em right? You're a emfailure/em. You are not my father. Reinhard Heydrich is my father! He is my Fürher and teacher. I take my place by his side. You, though…"/p  
p dir="ltr"Thomas paused. John lay helpless, unable to wipe away the trickle of drool dripping down his chin. Thomas turned away to hide the sobs that silently shook his lean, youthful form./p 


	6. Chapter 6

p id="docs-internal-guid-7d505b6e-f47c-14a4-af57-3a77c2d7edb1" dir="ltr"In time, Thomas composed himself well enough to dress. He put on his school uniform, which John had not known Thomas had packed./p  
p dir="ltr" /p  
p dir="ltr"John's son, tall and strong, regarded himself in the lodge's one mirror, checking that his tie's knot was symmetric and his swastika armband was straight. He paused at attention, perhaps looking for a hint if he was up to the task./p  
p dir="ltr" /p  
p dir="ltr"Thomas went outside, not sparing John a backward glance, and returned with the wheelbarrow. Not too gently, he tipped John's still numb body into it. He wheeled John out behind the lodge to the well in the yard overlooking the lake. It was an old-fashioned thing, an open shaft with a bucket on a rope./p  
p dir="ltr" /p  
p dir="ltr""The well is perfect,' said Thomas, the emotion gone now, replaced by a honed iron edge. "Did you think to use it? If not, that would be the final disappointment. When you fall down it head first, it will align your body and guarantee a broken neck. Since you didn't pack any booze, I made sure to bring some. I'll show the police the empty bottle and admit, with a bit of embarrassment, you were drinking when I fell asleep. I'll say I found you in the well this morning after a long search. I will be shocked, but I won't cry, and everyone will admire my fortitude. They will not be surprised when Heydrich, devastated by news of the tragedy, takes me on as his unofficial stepson."/p  
p dir="ltr" /p  
p dir="ltr"Thomas quit talking and he performed the awkward task of lifting John's deadweight so to sit him on the rim of the well./p  
p dir="ltr" /p  
p dir="ltr"emThomas! Do not do this! Think of what Heydrich will do to you, once you're no longer useful…!/em/p  
p dir="ltr" /p  
p dir="ltr"Thomas positioned himself directly in front of John's balanced body and came to attention with a click of his polished heels./p  
p dir="ltr" /p  
p dir="ltr""Heil Hitler!"/p  
p dir="ltr" /p  
p dir="ltr"Thomas saluted with just the barest hint of a smirk. He aimed his outstretched arm low so his fingers tapped John's chest./p  
p dir="ltr" /p  
p dir="ltr"The touch toppled John backwards and he fell headfirst down the well./p 


End file.
